WINTER SOLSTICE: LET'S FACE THE MUSIC

Apparently this will be my 81st winter solstice. One might think in all these years some of the mystery would be gone, but the mystery deepens. It deepens because there is no true repetition. The absence of repetition is something we seldom notice because we are so captivated by its illusion. Music delights us when we hear the refrain repeated.... the familiar returning. We scarcely notice the illusion that Time affords us. Each repetition is tempered by time. We are older, even thought it be seconds later, and that repetition invades time as a new entity, stamping the moment with its presence, even as we are shaped by the time that passes. Even though the earth is spinnng its predictable course around the sun, the sun is traveling around the galaxy and is in a new place. Time teeters on the edge of discovery, and we are in a different energy.

We also alter the moments by the space we occupy. Our changes may be subtle or dramatic, but they never repeat the past. As the human race, we share some vision of the future. We see a scintillating panorama of things to come...of machines obedient and serving us like slaves... of an increasing, never ending projection into a future where we control our destiny. But if we are to believe artifacts and remnants from the ancient earth, there were greater dynasties than ours that have vanished...
leaving behind faint echoes of civilizations that once flourished and have fallen to some cataclysmic ending.

Recently I listened to Diana Krall's "Let's Face The Music and Dance," a masterpiece in sound and interpretation.  I detected in the arrangement and improvisation more of an encounter with the universe, with entropy and with a moon that is widening its arc around the world until it spins out of earth's orbit to some distant destiny. There is a sense of cosmic inevitability about the arrangement that moves from a simple beginning to an ending that is like the running down of the cosmos...

Perhaps Irving Berlin meant this simple lyric would mask a deeper meaning... the law of entropy demands we pay the price of existing in time...so before our fling draws to a close, we will have to pay the piper, so to speak. There are no free rides....

Ms. Krall starts with a simple dance rhythm, nice and casual, but then a note of caution, a sustained string sound has a slight foreboding tone:

There may be trouble ahead,
but while there's moonlight and music and love and romance,
let's face the music and dance.

But we try to ignore those signs of impending disaster... the music is playing, and yes, we will have to pay for our putting off the inevitable, but this the time to celebrate while we can... let's get the most from this moment:

Before the fiddlers have fled,
before they ask us to pay the bill,
and while we still have the chance,
let's face the music and dance.

Reality interrupts the party... the universe is running down and the moon is pulling against the earth, intent to follow a different journey... the counter melody moves away from the main melody

Soon, we'll be without the moon,
humming a different toon,

Then the orchestra and improv become more complex in texture, and we hear a kind of wistful orchestra as we become aware that the end may be near:

And then, there may be tear drops to shed.

But we realize we have no control over the future or our destiny:

         So while there's moonlight and music and love and romance,

                 Let's face the music and dance.

        Soon, we'll be without the moon,
        humming a different toon,

        And then, there may be tear drops to shed.
       So while there's moonlight and music and love and romance,

                 Let's face the music and dance.

                           

                          Let's face the music and dance...

                                  Let's face the music and dance.              

                                         Let's face the music and dance...

                                                Let's face the music and... dance.
            

The repetition is incessant and sad, but also resigned to the beauty of the reality that reluctantly all things come to an end...  each repetition becomes fainter and fainter as the universe comes to its treacherous demise...suddenly Ms. Krall abruptly breaks the texture with an almost passionless utterance of "dance!" and the music seems to end teetering on the brink of chaos... a brilliant rendering starting simply and unraveling as time goes on in the song... music can be a comforting companion in a journey through Time.

REPETITION...  "Let's Face The Music and Dance" has been repeated many times over the years since Irving Berlin penned this song 81 years ago when I was born in 1936. All through those 80 trips around the sun, singers such as Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, and Frank Sinatra have charmed fans with their versions which voiced the reluctance of two lovers resigned to an unknown fate... and then the song repeated in a new era, wiser in the understanding of our place in the universe, Diana Krall reminds us that we should relish "our place in the sun" while we can... just Face The Music and Dance...

And so this solstice is our romance with humanity's journey with the sun and our hope that the sun will continue to sustain us for another season... a ritual since before Stonehenge and now in a few days on Sunrise Mountain on Jeju Island.